Ethnic Diversity and Economic Performance

Ethnic Diversity and Economic Performance The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Alesina, Alberto, and Eliana La Ferrara. 2005. Ethnic diversity and economic performance. Journal of Economic Literature 43(3): 762-800. Published Version http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/002205105774431243 Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:4553005 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA HH II EE RR Harvard Institute of Economic Research Discussion Paper Number 2028 Ethnic Diversity and Economic Performance by Alberto Alesina and Eliana La Ferrara December 2003 Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts This paper can be downloaded without charge from: http://post.economics.harvard.edu/hier/2003papers/2003list.html The Social Science Research Network Electronic Paper Collection: http://ssrn.com/abstract=569881 Ethnic Diversity and Economic Performance1 Alberto Alesina Eliana La Ferrara Harvard University Universita’ Bocconi NBER, CEPR IGIER December 2003 1We thank David Laitin and two anonymous referees for very useful comments. Angelo Mele provided excellent research assistance. Alesina is grateful to the NSF for financial support through a grant to the NBER. Abstract We survey and asses the literature on the positive and negative effects of ethnic diversity on economic policies and outcomes. Our focus is on countries, on cities in developed countries (the US) and on villages in developing countries. We also consider the endogenous formation of political jurisdictions and we highlight several open issues in need of further research. 1Introduction From the “tragedy of Africa” to social problems of American cities, the effects of racial conflict have risen to the center of attention not only of policymakers but also of academic researchers.1 While sociologists and political scientists have long been aware of the importance of these issues, only recently economists have begun paying more systematic attention to them. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the question: is ethnic diversity “good” or “bad” from an economic point of view, and why? Its potential costs are fairly evident. Conflict of preferences, racism, prejudices often lead to policies which are suboptimal from the point of view of society as a whole, and to the oppression of minorities which may then explode in civil wars or at least in disruptive political instability. But an ethnic mix also brings about variety in abilities, experiences, cultures which may be productive and may lead to innovation and creativity. The United States are the quintessential example of these two faces of racial relations in a “melting pot”. While much evidence points toward the problem of racial heterogeneity in US cities, the racially mixed and racially troubled New York City and Los Angeles are constant producers of innovation in the arts and business. In what follows we try to highlight the trade off between the benefits of “variety” and complexity and the costs of heterogeneity of preferences in a multi-ethnic society. In order to bring more evidence to bear on this question we plan to examine jointly two strands of the literature that have proceeded in a parallel way: one on cross country comparisons, and one on local communities. The latter is itself split into two sub areas with little communication between the two, namely the public and urban economics literatureonUScitiesontheonehand,andthedevelopment literature which focuses on groups and local communities on the other. Within both strands of the literature, one approach takes the size and number of jurisdictions (countries or localities) as given, and studies the effects of different degrees of ethnic fragmentation on quality of government, economic policies, growth, unrest, crime, civil wars etc. A second and less developed approach focuses on the fact that the number and size of political jurisdictions is itself determined by the ethnic composition of the population. In the process of examining the existing literature we provide some new results and we highlight several open questions ranging from data and measurement problems, to unsolved empirical and theoretical puzzles, to policy implications. While we are of course perfectly aware that American cities are very different from African villages, we believe that highlighting similarities and differences in the findings may shed some light on the question at hand, for instance how different levels of development and different types of racial, linguistic or religious conflict play out in the political economy of various parts of the world. As always when reviewing a strand of the literature one has to put 1We use the terms “racial” and “ethnic” interchangeably when referring to fragmentation, although we are aware that the two concepts differ and we shall highlight the differences when in order. 1 boundaries. We limit ourselves to “direct” economic effects of diversity; we leave aside indirect effects that may go trough civil wars. crime, revolutions etc. We proceed in the following way. In section 2 we discuss the theoretical underpin- nings of the relationship between ethnic diversity and economic performance. We also sketch a simple model, which has no pretence of being innovative but illustrates clearly the pros and cons of ethnic fragmentation and sets the stage for the discussion of the literature (mostly empirical) that follows. Section 3 discusses the effects of ethnic and racial fragmentation in various types of communities holding the number and size of communities as exogenous. We examine evidence collected on three types of communities: social groups, localities and nations. Section 4 discusses the question of endogenous formation of groups, localities and nations. Section 5 concludes by discussing several open questions in this area of research. The last section attempts to draw some tentative conclusions and policy implications. 2Theoriesondiversity Thegoalofthissectionistobriefly highlight some economic motivations underlying the relationship between ethnic diversity and economic performance. Since no comprehen- sive treatment of this is available, we start by gathering different contributions that can give a more or less coherent picture of the microfoundations for this relationship. Having established such microfoundations, we thenmovetoanalyzetheimpactofdiversityon policies and productivity through a simple reduced-form model. 2.1 Some “microfoundations” The most basic way in which ethnic diversity can affect economic choices is by directly entering individual preferences. Early work on social identity theory has established that patterns of intergroup behavior can be understood considering that individuals may attribute positive utility to the well being of members of their own group, and negative utility to that of members of other groups (see e.g., Tajfel et al. (1971)). A recent formalization of this concept is the analysis of group participation by Alesina and La Ferrara (2000), where the population is heterogeneous and individual utility from joining a group depends positively on the share of group members of one’s own type and negatively on the share of different types. A second way in which diversity can affect economic outcomes is by influencing the strategies that individuals play. Even when individuals have no taste for or against ho- mogeneity, it may be optimal from an efficiency point of view to transact preferentially with members of one’s own type if there are market imperfections. For example, Greif (1993) argues that traders in Medieval times formed coalitions along ethnic lines in order to monitor agents by exchanging information on their opportunistic behavior. Ethnic 2 affiliation helped sustain a reputation mechanism in the presence of asymmetric information. But strategies can be conditional on one’s ethnic identity also in the presence of perfect information. La Ferrara (2003a) shows that when contracts cannot be legally enforced (and therefore have to be “self-enforcing”), membership in ethnic groups allows to enlarge the set of cooperative strategies that can be supported. The reason is that both punishment and reciprocity can be directed not only to the individual but to other members of his/her group. A similar reasoning is proposed by Fearon and Laitin (1996) to explain inter-ethnic cooperation. Finally, ethnic diversity may enter the production function. Alesina Spolaore and Wacziarg (2000) employ a Dixit Stiglitz production structure where more variety of ”in- termediate inputs,” that can be interpreted as more variety of individual skills, increases total output. This model, however, does not identify a trade off in the production function since more heterogeneity is always better than less. The costs of heterogeneity are outside the production function. Lazear (1999 a, b) also discusses how different skills in a production unit may increase overall productivity. He identifies a trade off between the productive benefits of diversity and the possible costs that may arise due to diffi- cult communication between people with different languages, culture etc. There is an optimal degree of heterogeneity that is identified by the optimal point of this trade off given also the nature of the production unit and its technology. An empirical paper

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